Sydney, Jan 14 (ANI): The family of Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide weeks before he was to go on trial on charges of stealing millions of scholarly articles, has blamed prosecutors for his death.

Swartz committed suicide in his Brooklyn apartment on Friday night, his family and authorities said.

David Moon of Swartz's anti-internet censorship group Demand Progress said the hacktivist "refined advocacy for the progressive and open-information movement," News.com.au reports.

Swartz, 26, had been due to stand trial in April for allegedly breaking into a closet at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to plug into the computer network and download millions of academic journal articles from the subscription-only JSTOR service.

According to the report, he had written openly about suffering periodically from depression, but friends and family suggested the looming trial contributed to his suicide.

They accused MIT and prosecutors of being over-zealous in pursuing their case, the report said.

His family said in a statement that Aaron's death is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach, the report added. (ANI)

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